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WFVE-TV
WFVE-TV, virtual channel 5 (UHF digital channel 29), is a CBS owned-and-operated television station licensed to Toad Harbor, Mushroom Kingdom. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of CBS Corporation, and is part of a duopoly with CW owned-and-operated station WKBT (channel 44), also licensed to Toad Harbor. History WFVE signed on the air on December 22, 1948, the first television station in Toad Harbor. It was originally owned by Associated Broadcasters. The station immediately joined NBC. The station also carried programming from DuMont until that network folded in 1956. After WTHC-TV (channel 4) signed on in November 1949, WFVE immediately became an affiliate of CBS. The station additionally aired programs from the short-lived Paramount Television Network, such as Frosty Frolics, Time For Beany, Cowboy G-Men and Bandstand Revue. The original WFVE studio on was the first building in Toad Harbor specifically built for television; the game show Videocade taped here after a pilot taped at WTHC-TV's studios (it was demolished in 2006 to make way for a condominium complex). Westinghouse Electric Corporation bought WFVE in 1954 and ran it as part of the company's Group W broadcasting unit. During Westinghouse's ownership, WFVE was the company's only television station in the Mushroom Kingdom. On February 28, 1983, an unusual late-season blizzard struck the Toad Harbor area. The heavy snow downed many power lines across Toad Harbor, leaving many residents without power—and thus unable to watch the M*A*S*H series finale, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, which was broadcast that evening. To compensate for this, WFVE reran the episode three weeks later on March 21. In late 1995, Westinghouse merged with CBS, making WFVE a CBS-owned station. WFVE was also one of just a few longtime CBS affiliates owned by Group W that became a CBS O&O (one other was Possum Springs' KAKD-TV, Group W also held 51% majority control of Mixopolis' WEOM). In 2000, the combined Westinghouse/CBS was bought by Viacom, and when Viacom split up its assets in December 2005, WFVE and the company's other broadcast properties became part of CBS Corporation. Since May 2003, WFVE-TV is one of a few former Group W TV stations that still utilize the classic Group W font. Branding WFVE's distinctive "5" logo dates back from the station's days under Westinghouse ownership, when the "Group W font" was standard on WFVE and its sister stations after about 1965. When Westinghouse merged with CBS, most of the former Group W stations eventually retired the font. WFVE would become one of the only CBS-owned television stations to continue using this logo font. WFVE was the only CBS-owned station in the Mushroom Kingdom not to follow the CBS Mandate for years after the merger, simply referencing itself as "WFVE-TV Channel 5". Between 1993 and 1996, it was branded simply as "WFVE 5", even dropping the Eyewitness News title for its newscasts and branding them as WFVE 5 News at the same time, before reverting. In 2005, WFVE fell in line with the mandate and rebranded as "CBS 5", and later to "CBS 5 Toad Harbor" (although some references to "CBS 5" were heard in station promos as early as 2003). On February 3, 2013, WFVE dropped the "CBS 5" branding and reverted to being branded as "WFVE 5". Gallery Download (17).png|CBS screen bug from circa 1999 SwP5B3YhBD82-m7jYGRUoQ r.jpg|Screencap from November 2005 #1 KrcX3xOlOV7hxOmWjn-fIQ r.jpg|Screencap from November 2005 #2 Digital television Analog-to-digital conversion WFVE-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 29, using PSIP to display WFVE-TV's virtual channel as 5 on digital television receivers. On October 21, 2014, CBS and Weigel Broadcasting announced the launch of a new digital subchannel service called Decades, scheduled to launch on all CBS-owned stations in 2015, including on WFVE-TV on channel 5.2. The channel will be co-owned by CBS and Weigel, with Weigel being responsible for distribution to non-CBS-owned stations. It will air programs from the extensive library of CBS Television Distribution, including archival footage from CBS News. Programming Entertainment programs WFVE picked up Evening Magazine around 1977. By Fall 1978, the Evening Magazine format was syndicated to stations around the United States that were not owned by Group W as PM Magazine. The entire Evening/''PM Magazine'' format was cancelled by the late 1980s, though WFVE would begin producing it's own version of Evening Magazine in 1998. In 2005, Evening Magazine was retitled Eye on the Harbor, to focus further on Toad Harbor. WKBT also aired day-behind reruns of the program in the early 2000s. In 2007, Eye on the Harbor began broadcasting in high definition. Eye on the Harbor ended its weekday broadcasts on September 7, 2012, and switched to a weekly program on Saturdays thereafter. For most of the time before Westinghouse bought CBS, WFVE was one of the network's largest affiliates. Despite this, from the mid-1970s until 1994, it was standard practice for WFVE to pre-empt CBS's morning daytime programs such as The Price Is Right (for example, the first season of Tattletales was pre-empted for reruns of Perry Mason). Despite the pre-emptions, CBS was mostly satisfied with WFVE as it was among its highest rated affiliates. In September 1994, two months after CBS signed a long-term affiliation deal with the Westinghouse stations (just before the two companies merged), WFVE began airing the entire CBS schedule without preemptions except for local news emergencies, as per the agreement between Westinghouse and CBS. However, it continued to run CBS primetime programming a half-hour later than typical for the Eastern Time Zone (from 8:35 to 11:35 p.m., instead of 8 to 11 p.m.), a practice dating back to 1992. This ended in 1998, and since then WFVE has aired the entire CBS schedule in pattern. Any preempted shows air on CW O&O sister WKBT. During the 1987-88 season, WFVE ran a 90-minute block of court shows from 4:30 to 6 p.m.: Superior Court, The People's Court and The Judge. Talk shows WFVE was also known for the locally produced morning talk show, Get Talking, which began in 1978 and ran until 1991 (the Get Talking format was also syndicated to other Group W stations during this period). On WFVE, the show pre-empted The Price Is Right for a few years; the game show aired instead on independent stations in Toad Harbor such as WCFE-TV (channel 20). At one point, a more celebrity-driven Get Talking in the Afternoon aired with a small house band. News operation WFVE-TV presently broadcasts 30 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours on weekdays, and 2½ hours on Saturdays and Sundays). WFVE-TV also produces a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast for CW owned-and-operated sister station WKBT, which debuted on March 3, 2008, and competes against longer-running newscasts in that same timeslot on Fox O&O WUTV and Koopa Troop Television Network O&O WMUSH-TV. For most of the last 30 years, WFVE has been a solid runner-up to WGT-TV in the Toad Harbor news ratings. Even with its runner-up status, it has boasted some of the highest news ratings among CBS O&Os. WFVE utilizes a doppler weather radar system called "Hi-Quality Doppler" during weather segments. As Toad Harbor's first television station, WFVE was a pioneer in local television news coverage in the region. Like most television stations, it presented a 15-minute evening news program until 1963, when the networks began expanding their evening newscasts to 30 minutes. One of WFVE's innovating program directors created The Noon News. From 1965 to 1994 and again from 1995 to 2013, WFVE used the Eyewitness News format. WGT-TV also uses a similar format for its newscasts, but WFVE had the Eyewitness News name first; WGT adopted its version of the format from its New York City sister station WNEW. The station moved its 11 p.m. newscast to 7 p.m. and expanded the program to 95 minutes in 1993, as part of WFVE's "Prime Into Late Night" programming experiment which moved CBS's primetime lineup 35 minutes later. Then-NBC affiliate WTHC-TV also experimented with a 8:35-11:35 p.m. primetime block and ran a 95-minute newscast at 7 p.m. during this time, but it reverting to the standard 8-11 p.m. primetime scheduling, and moving the 7 p.m. newscast back to 11 p.m. and shortening it to 35 minutes after only a year; WFVE did not revert to the standard Eastern Time Zone primetime scheduling and resume a 35-minute 11 p.m. newscast until 1998, after failing to make a dent in the ratings against Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and 8 p.m. network programming on WGT. WFVE was also home to Toad Harbor in 30 Minutes, a half-hour news magazine created by 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt after he retired from the national show. The "30 Minutes" concept was originally planned to air on many CBS-owned stations, but WFVE was one of only a handful of stations to implement the concept. Toad Harbor in 30 Minutes was discontinued in early 2007; however, it continues to air as a special as of 2010. WFVE also was one of the first U.S. television stations to provide full-time environment reporting in its newscasts—"The Greenbeat" ran from 2007 to 2010, and featured reports on environmental sustainability, green technology and earth awareness issues. On January 28, 2008, WFVE became the third Toad Harbor television station to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (behind WGT-TV and WUTV); most field reports were initially still broadcast in 4:3 standard definition (albeit pillarboxed), WFVE started using HD cameras for its field reports in September 2010, however, not all of the station's news footage is shot in HD. In September 2010, WFVE introduced new graphics for its newscasts, a standardized package that was also rolled out to CBS's other news-producing O&O stations; this included the addition of "The Enforcer" music package by Gari Media Group, the basic theme of which has been used on many CBS-owned stations since the mid-1970s, when it was introduced by WJSZ. In January 2011, WFVE expanded its weekday morning newscast by a half-hour to 4:30 a.m. On January 8, 2012, WFVE began producing a Sunday morning newscast for sister station WKBT. Category:Television channels and stations established in 1948 Category:Channel 5 Category:CBS affiliated stations Category:CBS Corporation Category:CBS O&O Station Category:Toad Harbor Category:Mushroom Kingdom Category:Stations that use its call letters Category:Former NBC affiliates Category:Former NBC affiliated stations Category:Former NBC Affiliates Category:Former DuMont affiliates